I focus almost exclusively on PvP, whether solo, small gang, or large bloc warfare. In the past, I've been a miner, mission runner, and faction warfare jockey. I'm particularly interested in helping high-sec players get into 0.0 combat.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Brain Replacement Program

In a recent reddit comment thread,
I hinted that it was only a matter of time before I cite Nietzsche in relation
to Eve. Congrats... we're there.

I love Nietzsche because he forces you to re-evaluate the
basic foundation upon which you build constructs about the world. In Will
to Power, Nietzsche explains how the impetus – the driving force behind
human creation and motivation – becomes blunted, soft, and idle when when we
cease to look for meaning and definition within ourselves and we begin to look
for an external source for meaning. When
“What do I feel?” is replaced with “What should I feel?” and “What do I
desire?” is replaced with “What should I want?” the individual suffers and, in
the process, reduces the species as a whole.

And SRP is a life-denying factor in a sov-null alliance that would send
Nietzsche into a boiling rage.

Not All SRP Is Equal

In many non-sov alliances, a ship replacement program, (SRP) is meant
to mitigate the cost associated with learning the PvP trade. Younger pilots, in particular, aren’t
confident in their PvP skills and are looking for a safety net to prevent them
from expending all their hard-earned isk on it.
In the absence of sov costs (system ownership, I-hub upgrades, jump bridge
fuel, etc.), all of a corporation’s or alliance’s moon goo, customs office, or
income tax can go towards SRP. A lot of
these corps support T1 frigs, destroyers, and cruisers to help facilitate that
education.

In most small-gang corps, SRP covers any sensible PvP fit. In some cases, it’s limited to the hull
itself, and that only for T1 hulls.
Designed this way, it encourages pilots to learn, to fly different
ships, and fit their ships according to their wallet and sustainability. The content they receive is desirable,
enjoyable, and personally enriching; they’re free to experiment and learn why
certain tactic/fit/ship combinations work and why others don’t. Small gang corps can do this because they’re
looking at, at most, a dozen or so losses each fleet. These types of SRP programs encourage a
corp’s pilots to improve their flying and learn the game while mitigating some
costs through SRP. It’s an uplifting and
enabling SRP program.

But in null-sec, SRP programs tend to be destructive to the individual,
and are directly responsible for developing risk-adverse and myopic pilots
whose strength lies in doing what they’re told, not thinking for themselves. SRP is a river of flowing manna, and when
pilots start to become lazy, they start to look to that river for all their
nutritional needs. The crops wither, the
herds run off, the orchards rot on the vine, all because players believe the
manna will always provide for them.

“Yeah, You’re Gonna Have to Defend
That…”

I know, I just caused a lot of you to roll your eyes. “But Tal, sov null alliances wouldn’t survive
without SRP.” And you’d be right. But this blog isn’t about supporting the
interests of null-sec alliances; it’s about helping increase the number,
individual skill, and communal climate of PvPers. A thing is “good” if it advances individual PvP
knowledge and skill. And sov null SRP
simply doesn’t in its current form.

Consider the nature of alliances.
They need a lot of members to show up to sov-related fleets, and need
those members to act as a cohesive unit during the ensuing battles. They develop doctrines that require specific
ships and specific setups to ensure that everyone acts as one unit. Many of these tend to be expensive faction or
T2 setups, which require you to train skills to a very high level to even fly
them. To keep people logging in, most alliances
track participation, forcing you to fly within a specific number of fleets.

In the fleet itself, the fate of individual pilots is relatively
insignificant compared to the objectives of the alliance. It’s better to lose an entire fleet and save
sovereignty in a system than to keep everyone alive and lose the system. Alliances want people who will follow
commands, even if it leads to a fresh deathclone. As a rule, they don’t want you to think for
yourself when participating in large fleet fights. That results in things like you warping off
when you’re expected to stay and die, buying your fleet-mates a few more
seconds to alpha through a target or two, potentially turning the battle.

SRP is the way they compensating pilots for taking mind-numbing actions
and flying ships they’d otherwise never want to fly. “You fly what we say the way we say it and
we’ll reimburse you if you die, like it never happened.” It’s payment for service rendered. You can make a case that partial SRP is
acceptable since the alliance is providing a kind of content to players and
earning them kills (hopefully!). But to
some extent, they’re paying for people to show up and give over their cognitive
functions to an FC to achieve an alliance objective. And it’s all necessary to keep alliances
running.

But good as it may be for an alliance or a corporation, none of us is a
corporation or an alliance. A
corporation or alliance doesn’t (generally) pay subscription fees or feel
satisfaction or get a dopamine rush.
Individuals do. Nor does being
chained to SRP-eligible, doctrine fleets teach you anything except how to obey broadcasts,
follow an anchor, and press F1?

And that’s the key to the problem: “You must participate, and the only
participation that counts is when you fly the expensive ships we tell you to
fly and follow all our commands. We’ll
SRP you if you comply. If you don’t, we’ll
kick you from lack of participation.”
The entire process hinges on SRP as the great provider.

The Sapping of Will

This combination of policies requires pilots to join a certain number
of “follow commands” fleets to earn enough pap points to remain in the alliance,
and uses SRP as both the carrot and the stick to keep those pilots from
exercising any creativity or exploring any alternatives. For those with limited Eve time, that crowds
out participation in the fleets where we can actually learn something or try
something new.

You see, it’s not just that SRP makes people risk-adverse. It’s that this risk-aversion caused players
to become adverse to the types of PvP that require them to think, learn, grow,
and develop as PvPers. When all the
fleets you participate in require you to fit into a pre-established role and
follow the decisions of others, you eventually stop valuing the situations
where you’re required to make decisions yourself. Even if you aren’t personally dispirited into
only flying SRP/PAP fleets, it dramatically reduces the number of people in
your alliance who will join you on fleets where you do actually matter and you
do learn something.

Bringing It Back to the
Individual

How do we improve as PvPers? We
scrutinize the causality of our actions, making slight adjustments and
analyzing the results. FRAPS lets you
rewind and slow down a fight so you can engage in some play-by-play
review. We change something in our tactics
or our fits, and we become more comfortable assessing information and making
decisions quickly. We need to engage our
brains to develop a fit, test it, refine it, test it again, and learn how to
fly each particular fit effectively.
When someone gives you those answers fully formed, it entirely
eliminates the valuable part – an understanding of the “how”s and “why”s gained
through the process of developing those answers.

Fleet PvP afford an opportunity for the command group to improve their
skills; it’s incredibly difficult to gain and cultivate the skills needed to
command large groups of people, and they have their hands full learning their craft. It’s very time-intensive, and isn’t possible
with certain real-life situations (having small kids is one of them). It’s not as compelling for a line pilot,
though. When the policies in place actively
discourage independent thought and feed you “the answers” for a given fleet
doctrine, it leaves individuals without much agency or mental exercise. And that does nothing to improve you.

In fact, it can produce lazy flying that carries over to any fleets
where you do fly by yourself. Habits
form as a result of the most common experiences we acquire. If you’re busy flying F1-monkey fleets to
stay in the alliance, your habits will form around listening for commands and
obeying. That is classic “death of the
individual”, and can actually reverse pre-existing good PvP habits.

Alliances should be wary; this lesson leaves a talent sink that has
negative consequences both for alliances and individuals. This type of environment actually turns away
those who are looking for education and improvement. Very quickly, they’ll realize they won’t find
it with your group. And these are the
people who would craft your future doctrines, command your fleets, lead your
scouts, and serve as military directors.
Numbers don’t matter if you don’t have the home-grown loyal talent to
provide the impetus, leadership, and structure to those numbers.

Accomplishing the Mission

Yes, an SRP program is certainly necessary to a sov null group, but
sov-null needs to watch what effect their particular SRP policies have on their
members. Are your members incentivized
to innovate, explore, and learn how to fly better by knowing they’ll be
supported if they happen to die? Or are
you cultivating a culture of obedience and adherence to doctrine, rather than
creativity and personal development?

Watch for the warning signs: do your pilots refuse to fly anything they
don’t get on alliance contracts (ie. doctrine ships)? Will they avoid fleets that aren’t eligible
for SRP or PAP points, even if the costs of the ships involved are
insignificant? Are they entering into
situations where they learn and improve, or are they sticking entirely to F1
fleets? Are you having trouble with a
revolving door of leadership, or having trouble replacing those leaders from
internal candidates? If so, it’s not
because you recruited badly, it’s because your policies cultivate that kind of
weak PvP environment.

SRP can help serve to compensate pilots for completing the work
necessary to own sov: the unengaging dirty work of sov grinding or flying the
niche fits useless in any setting outside of an 80+ man fleet. When it works effectively, SRP encourages
PvP, but doesn’t discourage innovation and critical thought by your
pilots. Maybe that means offering a
reduced SRP for viable variations of fits.
Maybe that means having different policies for alliance fleet SRP vs
roaming SRP (like Goon “peacetime” and “wartime” reimbursement).

Ship replacement programs are meant to facilitate PvP, under the
perception that encouraging frequent PvP will improve your pilots and make them
more effective. It’d sure be a shame if your
SRP is actually making them dependent, mindless drones, wouldn’t it?

8 comments:

First is, SRP did not make people risk-averse. It is the contents and the way of the alliance makes people risk averse.

SRP is merely there to get people in the fleets to prevent them from being risk-averse during fleet fights.

Lets say you are a lachesis and have shitty isk. you bought the ship. during the fleet, you will not take risks If there is no SRR in there because you can't buy any other pvp ship.

Now with SRP, poor people can continue doing PVP.

Now the things you said above causes because of the way alliances create or get into content.

OFC they will dictate their own doctrines, they are created mainly to counter the enemies you encounter. Or other reasons. For example in command ships there are some tank mods there to keep you alive and gives you ehp. If a guy did not fit the right module, then he will die easily, but If he could chose to fit the right module, maybe logis can catch the reps on him alas he won't get SRP.

Especially Role ships have to be in the fits like that. Or utility mods etc. This is called "Organisational Structure" If you don't do it, it will simply be chaos and turkey shoot.

As I mentioned in the post, I don't disagree... SRP for sov-related fleets must remain as-is... otherwise, alliances will face problems with numbers, particularly for logi and specialist roles.

But I honestly don't understand how any members of sov null groups can be poor. It's so ridiculously easy to make isk in null that no one in a CFC or N3 coalition, in particular, has any business complaining about isk. Do anoms, sigs, or supply markets and you can be rolling in wealth. For the price of a single Ishtar, you can farm isk to your heart's content.

What concerns me is when SRP policies exist that hold and "let's get some fights" fleets to the same standard as sov objective fleets. When the point is to get experience PvPing, the policies affecting those fleets should be different than when you're achieving a strategic objective.

In every alliance I've been in, the existence of SRP has caused players to shun non-SRP fleets, and the education value of PvP tends to be heavily skewed in favor of exactly those kind of shunned fleets. The result is that members don't progress and become better.

And that concerns me, as a person who wants to see the number of engaged PvPers increase.

Null sec grunts are ment to be drones.......non thinking ships in space assisting their drones to someone with a brain. B4 that it was shooting the correct target with your arty, called by someone with a brain.

Pretty sure that's why Goonswarm Federation has peacetime reimbursements, with minimal fitting and skill requirements (currently double reimbursement for Goonfleet proper). It lets you experiment and do whatever PvP that you want while covering most of your costs.

Of course... you'll get paid more for strategic fights with specific fits, though that makes sense from a coalition persective.

Great read, as always! Posted it to /r/bravenewbies to make sure Brave pilots wont get stuck in the hamsterwheel!Here's the link just incase you wanna drop by (people might need advice from someone who knows what they're talking about): http://www.reddit.com/r/Bravenewbies/comments/2fkskv/psa_to_you_newer_pilots_who_recently_joined_i/

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